The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1887-09-23
HIS o BE ON US.

Then answered all the people, and said, His
blood be on us, and on our children.-Matt.
xvii, %.
And now mark, for one moment, the re-
venges of history. Has not his blood been
on them, and on their children? Has it
not fallen most of all on those most nearly
concerned in that deep tragedy? Before
the dread sacrifice was consummated, Judas
died in the horrors of a loathesome suicide.
Caiaphas was deposed the year following.
Herod died in infamy and exile. Stripped
of ibis procuratorship very shortly after
wards on the very charges he had tried by
a wicked concession to avoid Con the trial
of jesus, PLATE, wearied out with mis-
fortunes, died in suicide and Punishment,
leaving behind him an execrated name.
The house of Annas was destroyed a gen.
Grafton later by an Infatuated mob, and
his son was dragged through the streets,
and scourged and beaten to his place of
murder. Some of those who shared in
and witnessed the scenes of that day-and
thousands of their c~hildren-also shared
in and witnessed the long horrors of that
siege of Jerusalem which stands unpara-
lelled in history for its unutterable fearful
ness. ''It seems" says Renan, ''as though
the whole race had appointed a rendezvous
for determination" They had shouted
eve have no King but Cmsar!" and they
had no King but Caesar; and leaving only
for a time the fantastic shadow of a local
and contemplate royalty, Caesar after
Cesar outraged, and tyrannized, and pill
Jagged, and oppressed them, till at last
they rose in wild revolt against the Caesar
whom they had claimed, and a Caesar
slaked in the blood of its best defenders
the red ashes of their burnt and desecrated
temples. They had forced the Romans to
cruelty their Christ, and though they re-
garded this punishment it'll especial hor-
ror, they and their children were them
selves crucified in myriads by the
Romans outside of their own walls, till
room was wanting and wood failed, and
soldiers had to ransack a fertile inventive
ness of cruelty for fresh methods of in
f1Icting this insulting form of death. They
Saviour's blood, and they were themselves
sold in thousands for yet smaller sums.
They had chosen Bar-Abbas in preference
to their Messiah, and for them there has
dagger swayed the last counsels of their
dying nationality. They had accepted the
guilt of blood, and the last pages of their
history were glued together with the rivers
of their blood, and that blood continued
to be shed in wanton cruelties from age to
age. They who will, may see in incidents
like these the mere u%nmeaning chances of
history; but there is in history nothing un-
meaning to one who regards it as the voice
of God speaking among the destinies Of
men; and whether a man sees any signifi-
canoe or not in events like these, he must
be blind indeed who does not sssee that
mated, the axe was laid at the root of the
barren tree of Jewish nationality. Since
that day Jerusalem and environs, with
''their overwhelming miles Of grave-stones
and ver-lengthening pavement of tombs
and sepulchres, " have become little more
than one vast cemetery-an Aceldama, a
field of blood, a .potter's field to bury
strangers in. Like the mark of Cain upon
the forehead of their race, the guilt of that
blood has seemed to cling to them-as it
ever must until that same blood etfaceth
il. -Fagrar's Life Of Christ.